The practice of purchasing Twitter followers is not only causing controversy for Real Housewives and presidential candidates. In Saudi Arabia, a senior cleric has condemned the practice as "dishonest and mendacious", following a revelation that several high-profile Saudis were buying "phantom followers".

While we mock the surfeit of fatwas emanating from the Saudi clergy – tackling everything from personal grooming to Mickey Mouse – this one seemed to genuinely hit the nail on the head. Prior to his pronouncement, the manager of a Saudi marketing company had told the press that it had sold "bundles" of Twitter followers, Facebook fans and YouTube "likes" to "sportsmen, businessmen, poets and clerics", but preferred not to name names. Soon after this revelation, Sheikh Abdullah declared that not only was buying Twitter followers really sad, it was also sinful and dishonest.

The term "fatwa" may conjure up images of death sentences and men demonstrating with effigies on spikes, but at its most prosaic, a fatwa is merely a religious opinion that deems something to be unacceptable – the Sheikh simply issued a sobering condemnation of online behaviour and the excesses of social networking.

Think about it: is buying followers that much removed from all the self-promoting behaviour to which we have now become desensitised? After all, we post carefully edited updates of our lives, tailored to attract attention and an online following. We all cultivate a certain online persona. Wanting more friends on Facebook, "likes" on Instagram, or a tweet to go viral – should we shrug these off as merely the hallmarks of modern social dynamics? Or is it perhaps the indication of an actual pathology, a void that has become normalised by phatic online interaction with strangers?

Try to imagine the online behaviours that people consider humorously objectionable (the humblebrag, the promo, the retweeting of compliments and "Follow Friday" recommendations) enacted in real life. Imagine telling friends and strangers that someone thinks you're brilliant, or that you're about to reach a certain number of followers and would like to thank them all, or repeating every compliment on a work you have produced with a straight face. It is simply the sign of a "weak and disturbed personality", as Talal Thaqafi, a psychologist who backed up the fatwa with his medical opinion, declared. Wincingly close to the bone, he also went on to say that those who indulged in such behaviour "suffer from an internal void, and by increasing amounts of followers, he or she satisfies such a void, and draws attention to him or herself".

This is not to suggest that all social networking behaviour is symptomatic of an empty existence. But even at its most banal, a lot of it is self-aggrandising. Granted, in real life we all present a slightly abridged, polished version of ourselves in order to make friends and not alienate people, but this is magnified online, where much of it has become acceptable behaviour. So much of modern interaction is now virtual that naturally, some validation comes from it. But has this come at the expense of our authenticity?

Although it may be ridiculous to issue a fatwa on the topic, it's an honest perspective of social networking culture, where we seek attention that we are "unable to achieve by any other means". Next time your fingers hover over the retweet button, think about that.